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Nominations closed yesterday for the Western Australian state election, to be held four weeks from today.

415 candidates have nominated for the lower house. Labor, Liberal and the Greens have each nominated a full team of 59 candidates. The Micro Business Party (no I hadn’t heard of them either) have nominated candidates in 46 seats, with the Australian Christians running in 45. One Nation have 35 candidates nominated.

By-elections are due to be held soon in the two New South Wales seats of Manly and North Shore. The two seats sit side-by-side on the north side of Sydney Harbour, and are both very safe Liberal seats.

The seat of Manly was held by Mike Baird from 2007 until 2017 , when he resigned from parliament after stepping down as Premier.

The Western Australian state election, to be held in March, will be the first electoral test of One Nation since they won four seats in the Senate in last year’s federal election.

Since the party hasn’t been a significant factor in recent state elections, we can’t use past results to judge where they are likely to win seats. The only data we have is the booth results from the Senate ballot from the last federal election.

After multiple years of making plans and implementing them, the NSW government is now on the verge of announcing something which should have come much sooner. For councils that have already been amalgamated, there will be plebiscites where voters will be asked to decide on whether the amalgamation should be wound back and the former councils restored. In addition, all of those amalgamations which have yet to be implemented appear likely to be cancelled.

The South Australian Labor government has released legislation to reform the voting system used for the South Australian upper house. Like the federal and NSW upper houses before it, the legislation aims to eliminate the flawed and opaque group voting ticket system, but it comes up with a strange model which would have some odd outcomes.

The NSW state government has written to councils laying out the timetable for council elections for those councils which have not yet been amalgamated. This timetable could well see council elections held in every one of the next four years, with the possibility of some new councils not facing election until the next regular council election in 2020.